NASCAR » martinsville speedwayhttp://www.allleftturns.com
The best NASCAR site on the web: Breaking news, drivers, races, rumors, forums, pictures, and video—with a heavy dose of attitude.Tue, 31 Mar 2015 12:10:10 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2Coming This Sunday, Martinsville Madness!http://www.allleftturns.com/coming-sunday-martinsville-madness/
http://www.allleftturns.com/coming-sunday-martinsville-madness/#commentsThu, 26 Mar 2015 13:56:36 +0000Jimmy Machttp://www.allleftturns.com/?p=685735 If not for NASCAR, most of us couldn’t find Martinsville, Virginia on a map. This quiet little town (population 13,821- 2010 census) once famous for making plug chewing tobacco cranks up the volume for full contact racing this Sunday. If they were racing at night, “Heartache Tonight” by the Eagles would be a perfect [...]

If not for NASCAR, most of us couldn’t find Martinsville, Virginia on a map. This quiet little town (population 13,821- 2010 census) once famous for making plug chewing tobacco cranks up the volume for full contact racing this Sunday. If they were racing at night, “Heartache Tonight” by the Eagles would be a perfect theme song. “Somebody’s gonna hurt someone, before the night is through. Somebody’s gonna come undone, there’s nothing we can do.”

This is where it all started for NASCAR, with World War II Red Byron winning the inaugural event on (at that time) dirt surface. Regardless of the bones they may have to pick with today’s NASCAR, old school fans will be geeked up for good, old-fashioned full contact on the paper clip shaped track, NASCAR’s shortest at a distance of .526.

The drivers will be fired up. Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s victory last fall was a bucket list win for the sport’s fan favorite. This will also be where the son of fan favorite, Chase Elliott, will make his Sprint Cup debut.

A number of notables will be looking to get untracked. Jeff Gordon has long had a mastery of the track, and is in need of a strong run here. Clint Bowyer has had his share of strong runs at Martinsville, and he needs one here to get back to contender status. A nice run will also benefit Matt Kenseth, who was every bit the contender at Auto Club Speedway, before breaking an axle last Sunday. Of course, Kevin Harvick will seek to continue his date with history by finishing first (or second). Happy now has a streak of eight conescutive 1-2 finishes. That he has finished first or second in the first five races of the season already has the defending champion in the history books.

Then there’s the rivalries. Which ones will come to a head at Martinsville? Gordon vs. Keselowski? Kurt Busch vs. Jimmie Johnson? Tony Stewart or Danica Patrick vs. seemingly everybody? Forget the past, chances are the closed quarters will produce a new feud. When you see all these less familiar names like Martin Truex Jr., AJ Allmendinger and Paul Menard closer to the top of the season leaderboard, it means there are plenty of names more familiar with pent up frustration ready to bump and grind. It all makes college basketball look pretty tame by comparison.

After racing on the equivalent of a four-lane freeway last week, it all gets up close and personal in Martinsville. There have been concerns that NASCAR would look to eventually shudder the old grandaddy of a track. No way! This is “stock” car racing the way it was meant to be.

]]>http://www.allleftturns.com/coming-sunday-martinsville-madness/feed/0Winning Is The Best Deodoranthttp://www.allleftturns.com/winning-best-deodorant/
http://www.allleftturns.com/winning-best-deodorant/#commentsTue, 28 Oct 2014 07:44:15 +0000Jimmy Machttp://www.allleftturns.com/?p=685159Getting eliminated from the Chase in spite of a sold season stinks. The 88 team- fronted by Dale Earnhardt Jr.- washed away all that disappointment with the sweet scent of victory at Martinsville. As far as NASCAR’s favorite son is concerned, you can have your points, it’s the winning that matters. “Winning races is the [...]

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Getting eliminated from the Chase in spite of a sold season stinks. The 88 team- fronted by Dale Earnhardt Jr.- washed away all that disappointment with the sweet scent of victory at Martinsville.

As far as NASCAR’s favorite son is concerned, you can have your points, it’s the winning that matters. “Winning races is the priority. I don’t know that I’d be that damn happy about winning a championship had we not won any races this year. So definitely winning these races is a whole lot of fun.” You have to love that sentiment from a driver.

Earnhardt also tells the press he has a whole new appreciation for victory after what he’s been through. “I think the reason why we celebrate the wins with real genuine emotion and elation is because I remember when we were winning in the Busch Series, we won at Milwaukee. We got up to Victory Lane, it was just like going through the motions. We even looked at each other and said, Damn, we’re winning so much, we almost come to expect it, just go through the hat dance, all that. So young back then. You thought, Man, you’re going to win a lot more races. But it’s not easy and you don’t. You don’t have all these awesome years where you’re piling up wins, just hitting homers every week. I think the older you get, you definitely come to appreciate how challenging it is, how the competition is very difficult, how so many guys out there are capable of winning.”

He also gets a certain satisfaction knowing there were critics, dare we even say haters, who wrote Junior off- not as a “has been,” but a “never was.” He says “I mean, there’s a lot of people that wrote us off, wrote me off. Even after winning Daytona, even after Pocono, people said, He probably won’t win no more. It’s awesome to prove somebody wrong. That’s probably not the priority. But, I mean, I can’t believe 40 years old that I’m still doing this, still successful at it, still with a great team, maybe the best team I’ve ever been with. It’s something that I hope I can sustain and hopefully be fortunate enough to be with this group for many years, and we might have as good an opportunity next year and maybe the year after that to win a championship.”

For a racer, especially one who is a third-generation wheel man, a win at a track like Martinsville is especially sweet. “Short-track racing is something I love. It’s not a lost art but it’s definitely not something we get a lot of and do a lot of. This is a great ticket. It’s a great racetrack. It’s a great place to come see a race. These people here in this area are proud of this racetrack.” Earnhardt is now a part of that history, the same history his legendary father was once a part of “ You know, I love the history of the sport and just can’t get enough of like all these pictures on the wall in here. I just know this place has a special meaning and a special place in the series and the sport.”

For a moment, missing the chance to send crew chief Steve Letarte a championship pit boss does not matter. The 88 team has come away with a bucket list win. If you win at a road course with all its twists and turns, or if you win in the closed quarter, full contact competition of a short track, you’ve done something.

NFL Hall of Famer John Madden had it right when he said “winning is the best deodorant.” It’s even more than that; it’s therapeutic, it’s empowering, and therefore often sets down a foundation for more winning.

After a long dark era of futility, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Junior Nation could grow accustomed to a little more winning.

]]>http://www.allleftturns.com/winning-best-deodorant/feed/0A Redemption Story In An Unlikely Placehttp://www.allleftturns.com/a-redemption-story-in-an-unlikely-place/
http://www.allleftturns.com/a-redemption-story-in-an-unlikely-place/#commentsTue, 01 Apr 2014 03:21:31 +0000Jimmy Machttp://www.allleftturns.com/?p=684266NASCAR fan, could you have imagined we would be where we are today? Just two short seasons ago, it looked like the party was over. Released from Penske Racing- the team that had given Kurt Busch his second chance just five years earlier- the 2004 NASCAR Cup champion appeared destined for a career with start-and-parks [...]

NASCAR fan, could you have imagined we would be where we are today? Just two short seasons ago, it looked like the party was over. Released from Penske Racing- the team that had given Kurt Busch his second chance just five years earlier- the 2004 NASCAR Cup champion appeared destined for a career with start-and-parks or underfunded teams.

Today, Gene Haas is looking crazy like fox, as Busch earns a win for the ’41′ in just their sixth start as a team, at Martinsville of all places in the STP 500. This is Jimmie Johnson’s place. The elder Busch brother hasn’t won at the paper clip-shaped short track since 2002, back when Kurt was driving for Jack Roush. For his career, he has a lackluster average finish of 20.8 in 28 races, making the achievement even more impressive. Busch went toe-to-toe with the six-time champion and eight-time winner at Martinsville taking the lead, giving it back, but getting it back in a classic short-track duel between two champions who are two horses of entirely different colors.

The scouting report on Kurt Busch has always been he may carry around a lot of baggage, but boy, is he ever a wheel man! Busch put that on full display as he overcame the pit road incident with Kasey Kahne and Brad Keselowski, and raced to the front, fighting for that lead like a dog with a sock. If Busch has learned one thing over his long and winding road, he is not here on only his own merits. “I ran a lot of my early part of my career as an individual, and I didn’t respect my team, my team owners, and to have a team owner like Tony Stewart who’s a driver and an owner, I can communicate things to the mid-level personnel, those are all the things that I knew I struggled with and that I needed to communicate better to the channels of people that are all part of this team. It’s not just me and the crew chief or the pit crew that jumps over the wall. There’s a full channel of everybody, and when you have racers like Greg Zipadelli that are there to help you, Matt Borland was there to assist Daniel in our growth, and a whole group of guys back at that shop that are hopefully not going to tear the lobby down when we party, it’s that camaraderie and it’s that feeling.”

Yours truly pondered once after the parting of Penske and Busch if he would find himself on an island alone. Kurt Busch is not alone. The important lesson he has learned is that he now knows it.

No, please do not construe these words that somehow Kurt Busch has become a NASCAR “Mr. Goodcheer.” The dust up with Brad Keselowski shows Busch can still get hot under the collar with the best of them. That’s fine, there are still people who want to see “The Outlaw.” What’s different now is Busch has seen the highest highs with 25 wins and a title to his credit, and the lowest lows, working with teams that scraped and scrapped week in and week out, without teammates to watch your back. That understanding has served Tony Stewart well, and now Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick are understanding it too.

Kurt Busch? Winning at Martinsville? Goes to show you what can happen when you combine driving talent with a team that puts you in a position to win.

]]>http://www.allleftturns.com/a-redemption-story-in-an-unlikely-place/feed/0STP 500 Oddshttp://www.allleftturns.com/stp-500-odds/
http://www.allleftturns.com/stp-500-odds/#commentsFri, 28 Mar 2014 12:47:02 +0000Dan Farkashttp://www.allleftturns.com/?p=684256Jimmie Johnson made history….again. For the first time ever, oddsmakers have put a driver as a 2/1 favorite for a race. Johnson’s record at Martinsville is unbelievable, and it’s why there may be better options for those interested in Sunday’s STP 500. The Good: Johnson has 24 career starts at Martinsville. He has eight wins [...]

Johnson has 24 career starts at Martinsville. He has eight wins in those starts. That 33.3 percent clip is the highest for any driver at any track with more than ten starts.

When Johnson doesn’t win, he contends. Only seven times has Johnson finished worse than fifth. The other 17 times, Johnson has had a top-5 finish.

And get this, Johnson has finished outside the top-10 at Martinsville in just three of 21 races.

The Pretty Good:

If Johnson doesn’t win, Jeff Gordon or Denny Hamlin are strong options to unseat the King of Martinsville. Hamlin, bad eye and all, is 8/1 and has four wins in 16 career starts. Doctors cleared Hamlin to drive after whatever happened at Auto Club last week, and Hamlin was in the middle of a comeback prior to the California sinus infection/piece of metal in my eye/whatever that was situation.

Like Johnson, Gordon also has eight wins, plus a whopping 27 top-5 finishes. Much of this success occurred prior to Johnson’s run, though oddsmakers have Gordon listed as the second favorite at 5/1.

The Really?

As normal, short track fiends like Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch are under 10/1. The anomaly is Tony Stewart. Among active drivers, only Johnson, Gordon and Hamlin have better average finishes at Martinsville than Smoke. Unlike those three, Stewart is 35/1. That’s not a typo. A guy who has three wins at the track is 35/1.

Who knows how healthy Stewart’s leg is. Maybe the Stewart Haas package is down a bit this year, though I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe Johnson is just too good. But Tony Stewart being 35/1 at any track seems crazy to me and crazy to pass up at a track like Martinsville.

]]>http://www.allleftturns.com/stp-500-odds/feed/0Advantage: Jimmie Johnsonhttp://www.allleftturns.com/advantage-jimmie-johnson/
http://www.allleftturns.com/advantage-jimmie-johnson/#commentsThu, 24 Oct 2013 10:00:25 +0000Jimmy Machttp://www.allleftturns.com/?p=683509In a perfect world, every chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship would go down like it did in 2011. Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards were tied, with the advantage going to Smoke, because he had more wins. Who could argue that? Alas, it’s not a perfect world, and the five-time champion Jimmie Johnson- whom [...]

In a perfect world, every chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship would go down like it did in 2011. Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards were tied, with the advantage going to Smoke, because he had more wins. Who could argue that? Alas, it’s not a perfect world, and the five-time champion Jimmie Johnson- whom some would liken to Darth Vader- has thundered past Matt Kenseth took the points lead, albeit by a razor thin margin of four, and appears also to have an advantage down the home stretch.

If you’re a Jimmie Johnson fan, you have to like the road ahead. Of the four races that remain, two possess a decided advantage for Johnson, with another pretty close between Five Time and Matty Ice (sorry Matt Ryan. I couldn’t resist- the name fits Kenseth well.) One other track is a toss-up.

Are you tired of people calling Johnson “Five Time?” How about “Mr. Martinsville?” This race coming up weighs heavily in Jimmie’s favor. He’s won enough (eight) grandfather clocks, his house must be a very loud place at the top of the hour! In the last five Martinsville dates, the ’48′ has two victories and an average finish of 5.4. Poor Kenseth doesn’t even make the top 13 for driver rating, though his 15.8 career finishing average at the “Paper Clip” isn’t terrible by any means. If Kenseth isn’t careful, Johnson could darn near put the Chase out of reach for Kenseth, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch, Kevin Harvick or any other contender with any hope of catching him.

Texas is darn near a draw for the two. Both have two career wins in the Lone Star State, and Kenseth’s average finish is just a tick better (8.5 to 9.1.) The good news for Kenseth deals more in the realm of recent (2013) history, where the 2003 champion has been winning the mile and a half tracks.

The advantage at Phoenix has to go to Johnson, though it’s worth noting that Johnson finished second at PIR earlier this season, while Kenseth was a more than respectable seventh. Career-wise, Johnson has four wins, tow Kenseth’s one, and even when the ’48′ hasn’t won, their finishing average of 6.5 tells you a great deal about how well the Hendrick Motorsports team has fared, even when they don’t grab the trophy.

Homestead-Miami may be the wild card if these two are still running neck and neck. The Florida track is one of only three (Michigan and Watkins Glen are the others) tracks where Johnson hasn’t won. still, it should be noted that usually by the time this race comes along, he hasn’t had to race all that hard, because either he could play the NASCAR equivalent of the “prevent defense” or he was clearly out of the running. Kenseth has a win at the track, but nothing in his history there necessarily suggests a huge advantage either.

Kenseth fans can take consolation in that he is writing a new history in his inaugural season with Joe Gibbs Racing, after over a decade with Jack Roush. He’s winning races and running better than he ever has; so who’s to say his hopes are finished? Kenseth has another chance to re-write history Sunday, and if he does, 2013 will prove to be a battle like none other Johnson has had before. What we do know is this: both of these drivers are like two hormonal teenagers chasing the prom queen. One is very aware of what the other is doing, both are mentally strong, and one will be poised to zip past the other should one slip. At the moment, Johnson has a slight lead and a firm knowledge what’s ahead. It will be fun to watch this play out.

How can you top this? At one of NASCAR’s tamest tracks, we had fights for the lead, trading paint on the last lap, and plenty of fireworks after the race was over. If this was the case at Auto Club Speedway, long derided as the ugly stepchild of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, what will it be like the .526 mile paper clip we know as Martinsville.

Don’t be too sure this will play out the way we expect. As obvious as it seems that Joey Logano will be running for his life, let us review the facts concerning the main antagonists. Denny Hamlin is on the sidelines for at least six weeks. Kurt Busch? Sitting in 13th in his first season at Furniture Row Racing, the elder Busch brother, ordinarily a more than willing fellow to mix it up, has bigger fish to fry, like an ex-con on parole.

How can you top this? At one of NASCAR’s tamest tracks, we had fights for the lead, trading paint on the last lap, and plenty of fireworks after the race was over. If this was the case at Auto Club Speedway, long derided as the ugly stepchild of NASCAR Sprint Cup racing, what will it be like the .526 mile paper clip we know as Martinsville.

Don’t be too sure this will play out the way we expect. As obvious as it seems that Joey Logano will be running for his life, let us review the facts concerning the main antagonists. Denny Hamlin is on the sidelines for at least six weeks. Kurt Busch? Sitting in 13th in his first season at Furniture Row Racing, the elder Busch brother, ordinarily a more than willing fellow to mix it up, has bigger fish to fry, like an ex-con on parole.

As for Tony Stewart, 22nd place is hardly where he wants to be at this point. One would think the owner/driver from Stewart-Haas Racing has more important things on his mind. Stewart, like Busch, will no doubt administer a little on track justice if it can be meted out at the right time under the right circumstances. Perhaps a little “love tap” in heavy traffic? Maybe. An impetuous affair that risks them getting themselves wrecked or fined? Not right now, they won’t. There’s too much to lose.

Say what you will about J-Lo, but he has at the very least demonstrated by now that he’s not going to be NASCAR’s whipping boy anymore, it doesn’t matter if it’s a three-time champion or journeyman back marker. If you consider yourself a contender, you will want to think twice before punting the 22 out of the way.

It’s just one fan’s opinion, but its reminiscent of Brad Keselowski in his earliest days. He was criticized for racing too hard, for lacking respect towards more experienced drivers and got himself wadded up more than once. Denny Hamlin said Bad Brad would never be a champion racing like that. For Keselowski, winning changed all that. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Does this mean there will be no action at Martinsville? Are you kidding? Something will go down, it’s just a question of who and when. It’s what happens when you stick 43 highly motivated competitors and 43 rockets and have them run around a track barely over a half mile long. When it comes to drama, March Madness can’t compete with the high speed insanity at Martinsville Speedway.

Jim McCoy is an award winning radio sports reporter and radio play-by-play announcer residing with his wife and three children in southern Oregon. A fan of many sports, his true passion is NASCAR, with its high speed intensity and feeling of community among the fans.

]]>http://www.allleftturns.com/martinsville-madness-coming-right/feed/1MARTINSVILLE SPEEDWAY SNOWED UNDERhttp://www.allleftturns.com/martinsville-speedway-snowed-under/
http://www.allleftturns.com/martinsville-speedway-snowed-under/#commentsSat, 06 Feb 2010 21:00:00 +0000With the Midwest and East Coast bracing for Snowpocalypse 2010, I thought it might help our friends in the Eastern half of the country to remember the lighter side of snow. After it has fallen, it can make an already beautiful thing even more beautiful. For example, Martinsville Speedway, after a recent snowfall...

]]>With the Midwest and East Coast bracing for Snowpocalypse 2010, I thought it might help our friends in the Eastern half of the country to remember the lighter side of snow. After it has fallen, it can make an already beautiful thing even more beautiful. For example, Martinsville Speedway, after a recent snowfall…